


Glitch in the System: Scars

by SystemGlitch



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 07:31:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12427902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SystemGlitch/pseuds/SystemGlitch
Summary: By K.A fitting coda happens.





	Glitch in the System: Scars

Firelight rebounded off the walls of the château’s master bedroom, its dull orange tendrils swallowed by the shadows filling the vaunted ceilings above them. At Sombra’s insistence, they sat closer to the hearth than usual, the evening’s dip in temperature severe enough that Widowmaker acquiesced to the hacker’s insistence without so much as a perfunctory jab. Foregoing their nightly tête-à-tête, she dutifully scooted the chaise adjacent their bed toward the fireplace, ignoring the mumbled complaints which accompanied the hacker’s collecting of pillows and blankets for their makeshift nest.

Unsurprisingly, Sombra claimed the méridienne for herself in the few seconds Widowmaker’s attention was elsewhere, hooking her legs over its headrest.

“You’re using it backwards,” the sniper quipped from behind her, pulling a blanket over her shoulders as she cleared the room. Sombra’s reply was little more than an exceptionally vociferous eyeroll and the wave of a hand that momentarily disrupted the hard light interface hovering above her head.

Paying her colleague’s flippancy no mind, Widowmaker stretched out on the floor in front of the daybed, leaning against its edge as she produced tattered paperback  copy of  _Une Saison En Enfer_  from the folds of the blanket.

“Now  _you’re_  using it wrong,” Sombra parroted, flicking her in the back of the head before she set to juggling drowsy search queries with one hand and an idle neck rub with the other.

The day had been an exceptionally long one, devoted entirely to painting the foyer - a task they deemed a good stopping point for their work about the estate as they neared the end of their stay. Its scale presented a challenge requiring more time and effort than originally assumed; as a result, neither had argued against the prospect of an early, lazy night. They spent it mostly in silence, Widowmaker thumbing through Rimbaud’s poetry while Sombra trawled the web for any particularly nasty bits of intel or gossip.

“You know people are trying to scalp tickets to the new exhibit in Numbani?” she asked disinterestedly, fingers drifting upwards into the sniper’s hair. “Using bots to buy tickets in bulk and sell them at three times the price.”

Dogearing her current page for future reference, Widowmaker set her book aside and tilted her head back into Sombra’s touch. “Nothing new,” she replied, eyes drifting slowly shut.

“Yeah, but the whole thing could just _suck_ , and then whoever’s running that scam’s going to be out a bunch of credits on a shitty installation. It’d be  _hilarious_.”

“I am sure,” the sniper yawned.

“You can’t tell me that’s not — huh.”

Widowmaker opened one eye, just enough to focus blearily on Sombra above her, brows furrowed in a mix of bemusement and mild confusion. “ _Quoi_?”

“It’s — you have a scar,” Sombra remarked, fingers lingering at the edge of her hairline to trace the pale, raised line near her right temple.

“And?”

“It’s different,” the hacker explained. “You’re not like Gabe or me; you don’t dive into the shit unless you have to, and even then it’s in-and-out. I’m not as bad as some, sure, but I’ve got my fair share. You’re, like, pristine,  _araña_.”

That much was true.

By now, Widowmaker was intimately familiar with Sombra’s scars: the faded edges bordering the cybernetic ports which anchored her translocation rig, the ghosts of bullets that hit their target, the requisite, faint blemishes on her knees and elbows that everyone who’d ever set foot in the field seemed to develop over time. One, in particular, stood out: the gnarled point of ingress which marred the hacker’s right shoulder, its freshness serving as a poignant reminder of Widowmaker’s own failure every time she glimpsed it. She always treated that particular mark with care, tracing its uneven edge with a delicacy that offered apologies Sombra had since asked her to withhold.

There were others, their origins less obvious or their means of delivery less clear, but the sniper never inquired as to their stories; given their occupational predication on conflict, she drew the reasonable conclusions and carried on. Anyone whose speciality required the close proximity Sombra’s did could be reasonably expected to wear their work long after its completion.

Conversely, Widowmaker, always at a distance, bore fewer reminders of missions past. A job well done - as was historically the case - meant she arrived at a given extraction point mostly unharmed save for a recurrent handful of bruises no amount of graphene could prevent. Some were from bullets, their impact deflected by the weave of her suit at the expense of a few, tender spots that persisted for days; most, however, were her own doing, a direct result of the mobility required to traverse from vantage point to vantage point. Enemy soldiers whispered rumors that Talon’s renowned sniper could be in two places at once - a helpful little fear tactic, but one which required her to be less than gentle with herself. She hardly noticed those bruises anymore, unaware of the fluctuation of their presence and absence.

With so few grim souvenirs of her own, the sniper was acutely aware of those she possessed; this chief among them. Some agents attached significance to them, but she never bothered. They were unremarkable, unimportant as anything other than the footnotes of victories past.

“What’s it from?” Sombra asked, shattering the sniper’s somnolent contemplation. “Do you know?”

“Of course.”

“…You gonna’ tell me?”

“Amari,” the assassin replied, a cold smile creeping slowly across her lips, predatory and completely at odds with her otherwise indifferent calm. One of her more remarkable successes, despite the former Overwatch officer’s survival of their engagement.

“Ana Amari? I thought-,” Sombra began, pausing to rack her brain. “Didn’t you shoot her in the face?”

“After she shot me.”

Sombra snorted her disbelief. “Really.”

“Really. She was good - excellent, even; I was better.”

A moment passed between them, Sombra chewing on a response while Widowmaker watched her through that same, single eye with passive curiosity. “Can I ask a question?” the hacker asked at last, her hesitation giving way to a noted wariness. “And you don’t have to answer if you don’t want?”

“ _Oui_.”

“Does it bother you?”

“This?” Widowmaker asked, tapping the the scar in question. “No. It is not important to me. She is not important to me.”

“Was she?”

The sniper closed her eye, leveling a slow breath. The answer to that question required more consideration than others, more parsing as she attempted to peer through the fog of time and conditioning. There were memories beyond it, noticeable in glimpses and tricks of the light: introductions, holidays, passing conversations; Ana’s face - younger then, her hair darker - among a host of others. She could detect as a result of those hazy recollections a pull somewhere in her chest, a thorn catching one’s clothes amid an otherwise easy walk.

“Once,” she answered with a fluttering of lashes. “She was important to Gérard; so, she was important to Amélie.’

“But  _you’re_ -,” Sombra began, swallowing the remainder of her reply as Widowmaker’s expression hardened perceptibly, eyes narrowing. “Sorry,” she sighed. It wasn’t the first time they’d reached this impasse, and to Sombra’s credit the sniper knew it was never one they arrived at intentionally, nor was it exclusive to only their conversations. She struggled to identify what bothered her more: the incidental conflation of her past and current self or the assumption that she would choose to return to the gutted remains of her past life if given the chance. Both were rooted in a simple lack of understanding of her own cognitive processes - her own thoughts and perception - and she couldn’t fault Sombra or anyone else for being incapable of reading her mind. Still, those innocent suppositions never proved less aggravating, and with the passage of years it became Widowmaker’s strong preference to avoid such conversations entirely.

Now, offering Sombra nothing in the way of constructive dialogue but her withering glare, she reconsidered whether that had ever really helped the situation.

“Ana Amari,” Widowmaker began cautiously, forcing herself to relax as she cast her gaze over the shadowed edges of the room in a vain hope they would yield any assistance, “means as much to me as any Overwatch agent: she is the enemy. That was true then, and it is true now. She meant something to Amélie, but I am  _not_  Amélie. I could not be her if I wanted to, and even if I were capable of that choice, I would not choose to be her again.”

Frowning, Sombra slid off the edge of the chaise to join her partner on the floor, close enough that their arms touched but cognizant of any latent desire for space given the turn their conversation was taking. “We can talk about something else if you want,” she suggested apologetically.

“It is fine,” the sniper said, dismissing the other woman’s concern with a faint shrug. “Amélie is a scar. I carry her with me, just as I do Amari’s failure, but they have no influence over me.”

“Don’t they?” Sombra asked quietly, tempering the weight of her inquiry with the deliberate softness of her tone. “You’ve had some  _bad_  nights,  _mi cielita_.”

Widowmaker frowned and canted her head to one side, focusing on some distant point as if trying to discern the particulars of a painting or photograph. Despite the ardency of her desire to reclaim what life she had left for herself, her past remained, vivid memories littering the road ahead with tripwires and caltrops she could never see until it was too late. Cognitively, she had moved on - had acknowledged and accepted the loss of twenty years and watched it burn as it drifted off to sea. Emotionally, something was missing, its absence glaring in the wake of the past two weeks.

“I do not know,” she relented. “I am content with who and what I am. Sometimes, I just  _hurt_. I know what was taken from me. I do not miss it, but I am still aware it is gone.”

Sombra nodded. “Grief hurts.”

Beside her, the sniper shifted and pulled her blanket more tightly about her shoulders as if to shield herself from some other, phantom cold, her frown deepening. “I am not programmed to be able to grieve,” she replied flatly.

“You’re not programmed to fuck your coworkers, either,” Sombra grinned. Widowmaker laughed despite herself, hiding her embarrassment amid the folds of her blanket.

“Hear me out,” Sombra continued, pushing past the fabric between them to find the other woman’s hand. “You can be cool with your shit and still feel bad. That’s okay. Mourning takes time and it never really stops. It’s probably going to be harder for you than anyone else because you’re a lizard person-,”

“-rude-,”

“-a  _very attractive_  lizard person. Just let yourself feel it when it happens and figure it out from there.” With a gentle squeeze, she pressed herself more firmly against the sniper’s side. The gesture was momentary, but its meaning clear: an offer to assist when and where desired.

“I would like to try,” Widowmaker nodded, resting her head on her colleague’s shoulder. “I am going to cry on you more, though.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Sombra chuckled.

“I’m not.”

“Then you’re already on your way. Good job, spider.”


End file.
